I guess it is safe to say that each person has a different standard for beauty. What I may find exquisitely beautiful may be disappointingly plain in your eyes. Likewise, what you may find extremely attractive may seem hideously repulsive to me. Quite laughable, actually, but quite true also. But no matter how diverse our preferences are, we usually come to terms with a general “standard” for beauty.

‘Superficial’

So, what makes a person beautiful? Is it the big and expressive eyes or the small and mysterious ones? Tall and straight nose or the button-like cute nose? Full and luscious lips or thin and pale? Or perhaps it’s not the individual details, but the overall effect of the combination of all these facial parts. How about the body structure — long and slender, or short and squat?

With the widespread fad of aesthetic surgery, we have become more superficial in our standard for beauty. We look at the facial features of famous Hollywood actors and copy them. We work out several times a week to achieve the perfect abs of the hottest movie star. We meticulously practice every makeup trick designed to make us look like someone else that we perceive as beautiful. But is beauty really just skin-deep?

‘Skin-deep’

Sometimes, we “fall in love” with a person’s looks and find that later on, we cannot bear to be with that person anymore because we cannot bear that person’s bad character. And then, there are times when we meet person who does not quite reach our standard for beauty but we come to love that person deeply in spite of the lack of physical beauty. And yet, when we gaze into that beloved person’s face, we see the most beautiful person in the world.

Beauty, after all, is not just skin-deep. Yes, we can be initially drawn to a person by how he or she looks, but later on, it’s what’s in the heart and character that will radiate outside and show us the real beauty of that person.

We men don’t cop to it, but we worry about our appearance just as much as any woman thumbing through the latest fashion magazine. Yes, we care about how we look; very much, actually — but in a different way than women do. Let’s take a closer look:

Insecurity #1: Hair loss

Women have bad hair days. But men have bad hair lives, especially when balding becomes obvious. “Hair loss is psychologically important for men,” says Stanley Teitelbaum, director of the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Institute in New York City.

Insecurity #2: Physical fitness/weight management

“[Men] are not so obsessed with some of the specifics of their looks in same the way women are — but they are into being fitter and leaner,” says Daniel L. Buccino, a clinical social worker and assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD. “Some want to be bigger and more ripped [man talk for ‘big muscles’], others want to be leaner.”

Insecurity #3: Aging

William Pollack, associate professor of clinical psychology at Harvard Medical School and author of Real Boys’ Voices, says, “Many of these men say they need to look young to get a job,” he asserts, adding: “There’s some truth in that — but they also feel like they’re losing their virility.” If a guy has ongoing issues with his attractiveness, says Buccino, “it’s time to explore his personality, sense of humor and character.”

Let’s hear it from the men themselves! What is your greatest insecurity about your body image?